


The Graveyard Shift

by spinner33



Series: CM - AU [2]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: AU Victorian London, Abuse of Corpses, Buried Alive!, F/M, Gravedigging, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 22:52:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5023651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinner33/pseuds/spinner33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Case fic spliced with AU Victorian London.  Gravedigger Hotch.  Medical Doctor Reid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Here I lie by the charnel door,_

_Here I lie because I’m poor,_

_The further in, the more they pay,_

_But here I lie, as warm as they._

_Churchyard inscription_

It was a good night in London for grave robbing. The weather was cooperating at least. The calm and bright evening had clouded over at sunset, and the sudden, surly downpour began in earnest at the exact moment that the Doctor and his companion, truly his client, arrived at the cemetery gate.

As the two well-dressed young people approached the modest cottage that served as the caretaker’s residence and the gravediggers’ headquarters, a grimy figure covered in black clothes and rain and mud appeared in the doorway.

“Doctor Reid. Good to see you again, Gov.” 

“Good to see you as well, Mr. Hotchner.”

The two men were a study in contrasts, an unlikely pair.

The doctor was young and pale and thin. He was elegantly-dressed and scrupulously-clean. He smelled of lavender and red wine. His hair was coming undone in the rain, but it had been tamed back and down before the weather had taken to undo it.

The gravedigger was older, darker, and much dirtier. His unkempt hair fell lank and uncombed into his brutal eyes. His hands were like clubs. His nails were caked with the remains of his daily toil. He smelled like burnt sausages and grave stench.

“Another client, Doctor?” Hotchner questioned. The young lady shrank back from the gravedigger and closer to the thin, pale, some would say vampyric, young doctor.

“Mademoiselle Jareau, Mr. Hotchner.”

The two studied each other with distrust, both wondering how the other had worked their way into the doctor’s realm of odd friends and acquaintances.

“How can I help you, Gov?” Hotchner asked.

“We are here to inquire about a most recent burial,” Reid said, his eyes dancing with anxiousness.

“How recent?”

“You would have lain this poor soul to rest within the hour, I should hope?”

“A young man ravaged by wolves in the forest. It was a closed casket.”

“You were paid a good deal of money to inter him with all due haste?”

“A bloody fortune,” Hotchner grinned at first, but he tempered his amusement with a stoic grimness once again. “Poor lad. No one came but the mother and father, husband and wife. An ill-matched pair. I would never picture them together, she being a country lass and he being a city boy by his clothes. She sat on the coffin and wailed like a night banshee, she did, as me and the lads dug the hole. Then she keened and wailed loudly as we lowered her boy beneath the earth and covered him over. Once he was covered, she calmed herself and was able to make it back to the carriage. Her husband didn’t shed one tear, but stood there smiling all the while. Cold man.”

“You could show me where you buried the poor unfortunate lad?”

“You want to see him, do you?” 

“Most urgently.”

“Doctor, I thought you gave up body snatching after your last misadventure. What would dear Mr. Gideon say to this moral backslide?”

“If we hurry, this might make up for those unfortunate events. And for the record, how was I supposed to know beforehand that I would be dissecting such a dear friend until I found him lying on the table before me?”

"God sought out your mischief and sent you a sign that you should right your ways.”

“Sent me a terrible shock, so He did,” Reid agreed. “I haven’t been able to step back into a medical theatre since. But this is different, I swear to you, Mr. Hotchner.”

“For the usual price, Gov?” “Yes, please.”

“Very well. Right this way then.”

Hotchner swung a shovel up across his shoulders and hung his big hands over the handle as he lumbered slowly across the cemetery grounds like a large hound loping over the Scottish moors of his origins.

“With some urgency, if you please, Mr. Hotchner.”

“What’s your hurry, Gov? I’ve found over the years that once I’ve put ‘em down there, very few leave without notice. He’ll be there when we get there.”

“By my calculations, there is less than twenty minutes of air left."

Hotchner stopped in his tracks and cast concerned eyes backwards, nearly cold-cocking the doctor with the blade of his shovel as he swiveled around. Reid ducked barely in time.

“Do you think the lad will be needin’ much air?” Hotchner gulped.

The young doctor crouched down and hurried past him, racing to the patch of fresh-tumbled earth ahead of them. The gnarled bent tree sweeping over the gravesite looked like a hand poking up out of the disturbed earth. Mademoiselle Jareau hurried too, catching her shawl on a memorial’s outstretched  
arm. She left her cover dangling on the weeping angel’s extended limb. Jareau was breathing hard and heavy as she raced clumsily to follow the doctor. Without her shawl, Hotchner was able to see exactly how pregnant she was.

“Hurry, Doctor. Oh please, do hurry!” Jareau sobbed.

“Calm yourself, love. Excitement is not good for your baby,” Hotchner said, offering her his arm for support. To his surprise, she accepted. He handled her with great care and tenderness.

“Dig,” the doctor ordered. Hotchner moved to obey, grinning dangerously at the young man for his commanding airs. The doctor took off his outer jacket, and picked up a mislaid shovel by the fresh grave, and bent himself to the task. They worked back to back, swing for swing, tossing the dirt sideways. Their shoulders were close enough to be touching. Their rumps certainly glided together smoothly. The doctor was panting heavily from the exertion, but the gravedigger had hardly broken a sweat.

“Bet you’ll be a feeling that come morning, won’t you, Gov?” Hotchner taunted, throwing another shovelful of dirt away.

They made good time – five minutes in, two feet down. The fresh-tilled ground was easy to disturb. The other gravediggers were coming in out of the darkness like hobgoblins in search of fresh meat. At least the rain had stopped (for now), but the rolling fog which replaced it did not calm or soothe anyone’s nerves.

They kept digging – Hotchner and Reid – as the other gravediggers watched and grinned at them. Finally, Hotchner struck the coffin itself. The doctor stilled Hotchner’s next swing.

They could hear muffled shouting, kicking, screaming, pounding. Hotchner leapt out of the grave, yanking the doctor along bodily and roughly. The other gravediggers were gasping and crossing themselves.

“Crivvens! (Christ defend us)” Hotchner exclaimed, leaving a muddy handprint along the breast and under the arm of the doctor’s shirt as he pulled him to safety.

“Seems you may have planted one too early,” Reid smiled over his shoulder at Hotchner, doing a fair imitation of the older man’s accent. The gravedigger released the doctor and climbed to his feet, whistling loudly.

“Move your arses! Pull it up and out!” Hotchner shouted.

His fellow gravediggers fell down into the wound in the earth, digging in with shovels and axe picks and bare hands.

“I can only pray we are not too late,” Reid fretted. Mademoiselle Jareau hurried forward, taking the doctor’s shoulders, holding tight to him.

“William!” she screamed, hiding her face and praying softly. “William, oh, William.”

“Do not excite him, ma chére. He will use up his air faster.”

“Steady,” Hotchner echoed as one skittish lad leapt away from the jumping, churning coffin and the unearthly noises emanating from the grave. “The dead can’t hurt you, Jack. It’s the live ones you must be wary of,” Hotchner soothed, patting the youngster’s back.

Using the tip of an axe pick, the gravediggers pried off the boards on top of the coffin. With a sizeable hole made, there was an incredible gasp for air from inside the tiny wooden womb. The gasp was followed by an incoherent scream of panic.

“Calm yourself, Monsieur LaMontagne,” Reid called out.

“Please, Doctor, they must hurry!” Jareau exclaimed, trying to move forward to the grave itself. Reid kept her back, and they landed on their bottoms in the muck.

“Let them work, ma chére,” Reid pleaded, nearly sliding forward into the grave himself as the unsteady, wet muck moved beneath his bottom.

Hotchner reached up with both hands and grabbed the doctor’s spread knees, stopping his progress. They remained nearly nose to nose for several seconds. Hotchner raised a brow and clutched those knees tightly. He might have even spread them apart further. Reid was breathing erratically, and not from exertion. Jareau pushed against Reid’s back, and he moved forward again, nearly falling into right against Hotchner’s chest.

A hand emerged from the hole in the coffin, clawing for freedom. Hotchner pushed the doctor away from the grave and then returned to his task. The gravediggers continued on with renewed enthusiasm. Their rain- drenched, mud-sodden prize waited but a few shovels of dirt away.

And then at last, rebirth.

Hotchner pulled William free of his untidy prison, tugging him screaming and kicking into the world in much the same fashion as the doctor who had been present at his first birth – which is to say there was much agony and mess and blood as the young man panicked and scraped his arm on one of the coffin nails. Afterwards there was a good deal of joyous sobbing.

“William!” Jareau cried, throwing her arms around him, dirt and blood and mess not mattering. “Oh, William!”

“Monsieur LaMontagne. We meet at last,” the doctor smiled. “If you will permit me to be so forward as to express my opinion on your nocturnal habits about London?”

“Thank you! Oh, thank you! You saved my life, sir!” 

“It was not my work alone,” Reid replied, motioning to the assembly of gravediggers who were regarding the blood and mud streaked man as if he might have been a true denizen of the underworld.

“Merci! Thank you!” LaMontagne repeated, moving forward as if to hug them all at once. The gravediggers leaned away as one unit, and fled the hole and the near vicinity with a rapidity that surprised even Hotchner. The doctor stood there wishing he might be able to hear them explain this evening’s events to their friends at the pub tonight over a pint of lager. He turned his attention back to LaMontagne and Jareau as William helped Jareau to her feet.

“LaMontagne, you might consider a different diversion from gambling, at least until you are safely at home in New Orleans once more? There are certain factions of the London populace who take a dim view of those of cheat at games of chance,” the doctor offered as he stood up. He appeared to be grimly passing along knowledge from a lesson learned at great personal risk.

“I wasn’t cheating. They were too easy to read, that’s all,” LaMontagne defended. “You can’t blame a man for wanting to make a small profit.”

“Either way,” Reid shrugged, giving Mademoiselle Jareau a knowing look. She was shaking her head at her William.

“Mon canard (My duck – ducky – sweetheart), we are returning to New Orleans tonight,” Jareau proclaimed. “And you will swear to me that you will never play cards again.”

“Mais, Geneviėve,” William whined. “Bébé, jamais?” (But, Jennifer. Baby, never?)

“Jamais plus,” Jareau scolded, shaking a finger at him. (Never again.)

“I’d listen to her if I were you,” Reid suggested softly.

“Adieu, Doctor. Merci. Adieu, Monsieur Hotchner,” Jareau called. (Bye. Thanks.)

LaMontagne and Jareau made good their happy, soggy, muddy escape into the night, navigating unsurely past the memorials and the dearly-departed, clinging tight to each other in the darkness. LaMontagne collected Jareau’s shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders once more.

Hotchner climbed out of the open grave. The doctor pulled the gravedigger up straight, and whipped a handkerchief from his own pocket. Reid used it to wipe off Hotchner’s filthy face.

“Look what a mess you’ve made of my nice, tidy graveyard,” Hotchner complained. “Again,” he added impishly. “I may have to ban you if you don’t stop it.”

“Cheer up. Where’s the loss? You get to sell this plot twice then, don’t you?” the doctor replied, putting the grimy handkerchief back in his pocket.

“The usual payment, Gov?” Hotchner asked again, looking down at the muddy handprint he had smeared across the doctor’s once clean breast. There was so much mud on the doctor’s backside and legs that his clothing sagged to his hips. The sky opened once more, and unrepentant raindrops pelted them both. Streaks of mud ran away and down, and the doctor’s white shirt became more and more transparent the wetter he got.

“Your payment will be waiting for you, as soon as you wish to claim it,” Reid called to Hotchner over the noise of the rain.

“Your place then?” 

“My place.”

“I’ll be along by and by,” Hotchner promised privately. “Once I smooth things over here,” he motioned to the open grave. He picked up the doctor's jacket and gave it to him.

“I could stay and help you,” Reid offered.

“Move along, Gov. I like those hands just the way they are – soft, unbroken, with no calluses.”

“I have calluses too,” Reid whispered to himself as he toddled slowly away into the rain-drenched night, examining his thin, soft hands.


	2. Chapter 2

“Reid?”

“Yes, sir,” Spencer offered meekly, tucking himself downward, holding onto his upper left arm with his right hand.

“Reid,” Hotch repeated. “It’s not that I’m not grateful. But in the future, if an unsub has me lined up in his sights, and you’re afraid he’s going to shoot me?”

“Yes, sir?” Reid whispered, lifting his chin and turning the full power of those puppy eyes on Hotch. Aaron felt utterly defenseless for several seconds.

Morgan was grinning at them as he was slapping handcuffs on the suspect, dragging him upright and getting a tight grip on him. Rossi was putting away his gun, shaking his head. Both Morgan and Rossi were waiting for Hotch to continue. Hotch motioned for Morgan to take the unsub away, and Derek went as ordered, ducking angel arms and memorial urns. Hotch sent a dangerous eye-dart at Rossi. Dave reluctantly followed Morgan away.

“Next time, Reid, when you feel the overwhelming desire to throw yourself bodily into the path of certain death, don’t do it,” Hotch finished.

“Yes, sir. I’ll try and remember,” Reid wilted downward at the harsh words. Hotch felt as miserable as Reid looked. "Sorry if I made a fool of myself."

"It wasn't so much the leap of death, but the squeak of fright," Hotch grinned at him.

"Oh," Reid said sadly, sagging further downward.

“How’s your arm?” Hotch sighed, peeling Reid’s fingers off his wound.

“He grazed me, that’s all. I’m fine.” 

“You’re bleeding,” Hotch winced. 

“Sorry,” Reid whispered.

“You're sorry? For what? For saving my life? For having the nerve to bleed when you've been shot?" Hotch growled, giving Reid a quick smack in the head.

"Sorry," Reid said again, but he smiling a little this time.

"You’ll need stitches,” Hotch decided. “MEDIC!” he shouted, whistling loudly at the ambulance parked on the small paved path some distance away. The EMTs were loading a sedated young woman on a gurney into the back of their vehicle. Another five minutes, and she would have suffocated underground. One of the medics looked over at Hotch’s command, but he was motioning Hotch to come their direction. “Big bunch of cowards,” Hotch growled with menace.

“How did you know where we’d find Maggie?” JJ asked as she moved over the upended earth, being careful not to fall into the open pit.

“Lucky guess,” Reid shrugged his right shoulder. Hotch’s eyes were filled with warmth and amusement at Reid’s modesty.

“Halloween is not going to be fun for her anymore,” Hotch commented.

“But on a brighter note, she may live to not enjoy many more of them,” Prentiss commented.

“You two are so not getting in the SUV like that,” JJ said, pointing at their muddy, sodden condition. If Reid hadn’t leapt at Hotch and dropped them both into the pit where they had found Maggie, they could have both been dead as well as muddy and sodden. Of course, if the team hadn’t all been staring into the grave instead of around the cemetery, the unsub wouldn’t have been able to sneak up on them in the first place. They would remember that next time.

“I saw a hose and a spigot at the gate house,” Prentiss laughed, drawing a clean stripe through the wet mud that was caked into Reid’s hair.

“You do Reid. I’ll do Hotch,” Jareau suggested. Reid inhaled angrily and gave JJ a dirty look. She faltered, blushed, turned, and hurried away towards the gate house.

“She didn’t mean it that way,” Hotch whispered to Reid.

“Come on, baby. Let me do you,” Prentiss teased Reid, helping him to his feet. Hotch followed behind, smiling at them.


	3. Chapter 3

“The doctor is in his bath. You can’t go in there.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Strauss. That will be all,” Reid said from the confines of his large, porcelain bathtub. The spotless white room was filled with steam and sweet smells. It was hot as Hell and beautiful as Heaven.

“Very well, sir,” the matronly housekeeper muttered, glaring at the filthy interloper as she closed the bathroom door.

“That looks inviting,” Hotchner smiled. Reid looked up, offering a smile back.

“Take your boots off first,” he replied. 

“I wasn’t talking about the bath.”

“Neither was I,” Reid purred playfully in reply.

“It wouldn’t do for a god-fearing man like me to be seen in a contraption such as that.”

“Fer fuck’s sake, Hotch. Join me.” 

“I think not, Gov.”

“You’re going to wash your hands at the very least. Do you recall nothing of what I said about Dr. Lister and his work?”

“Lister. I do recall. You said he was a Scotsman too. A surgical doctor.” 

“Indeed he is.”

“What I have in mind isn’t surgery,” Hotchner smiled.

“You aren’t putting those hands anywhere on, or more to the point, in my body until you wash them,” Reid told him bluntly.

Hotchner relented. He wanted to put more than just his hands inside the doctor. He plunged his hands below the surface of the scalding water. The doctor scooped up a nail brush and one of the gravedigger’s rough hands.

“Thank God it rains in London now and again, or you would never get wet, would you, Hotch?” Reid laughed.

“Don't you know that pools of water are paths to the nether world?”

“It’s a bathtub, not the Thames, and, yes, I am quite aware that water forms the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead in some mythologies. What does this distrust of water have to do with your inability to maintain even a modicum of personal cleanliness?”

“I almost drowned once as a lad.”

“I was kicked in the chest by a horse once too, but you don’t see me forswearing carriages on account of hard feelings.”

“It may shock you to know this, Doctor, but I don’t have one of these back home in my boneyard.”

“I am more than aware of the chasm between those of means, and those who bear the want for even the barest necessities. I am of the belief that personal hygiene should be a right, not a privilege. You are always welcome to come and borrow my tub,” Reid murmured, setting to his task, scrubbing away at layer after layer of dirt. “What did you do to yourself?” he worried, uncovering jagged scar that ran the length of one of Hotchner’s palms.

“Handle broke,” the gravedigger replied, using his other hand to trace the dripping locks of hair away from the doctor’s face. Reid kissed the long-healed scar and cast tender eyes at Hotchner.

“Lucky you didn’t die of infection. I’ve told you before, you wouldn’t have to work another day in your life if….”

“If what?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself. Do not make a proud man beg. I earn more than enough at the university to take care of us both in comfort. You would never have to work again.”

“What would I do with myself?” Hotchner asked, eyes narrowed with annoyance.

“Whatever you liked. Whatever caught your fancy. Whatever inspired you. Can you imagine working at what pleased you instead of what fed you?”

“Man’s gotta eat. Man’s gotta feed his boy too.” 

“I could easily take care of you and Jack both.”

“I like to work. Toil is good for the soul. Idle hands do the Devil’s work.”

“Toil does not bring you closer to God,” Reid chuckled ruefully.

“Doctor, I have no desire to be your kept man.” 

“You wouldn’t belong to me.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“Not in the manner you mean, sir. Damned, prideful man.”

Reid switched to the second hand, cleaning it as well.

“I prefer to fend for myself, Doctor, if it’s all the same to you. I’m saving for the voyage,” Hotchner said deeply, quietly. “I won’t be a gravedigger forever. Jack won’t be neither, not if I can help it.”

“Voyage?” Reid worried.

“I got a letter from my brother Sean in New York, in America. He says I should bring Jack and come there. Lots of opportunities for those willing to work.”

“New York?” the doctor puzzled, eyes brightening. “I’ve never been to New York.”

“Could you amuse yourself there for a while then?” Hotchner asked.

“I’m sure I could if you were there too,” Reid answered.

“Glad to hear it,” Hotchner whispered as he leaned down and seized the doctor’s mouth with a kiss.

“You do know there might be water involved in a voyage to America, don’t you?” the doctor tested quietly as he peeled off Hotchner’s outer jacket and dropped it to the porcelain tiles below. His shirt followed. He remained stubbornly attached to his trousers yet though.

“How much water?” the gravedigger asked. 

“A lot,” the doctor replied.

“Not if you go through Europe, and across Asia, and through Russia. I saw your globe in your office, remember? Them plots of land are practically touching at that one point in Alaska.”

“Are you serious?” Reid paused. Hotchner was finally shedding his pants and undergarments. “You’re willing to trudge over the entire Eastern hemisphere of the known world in order to avoid going to America by water?”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Hotchner defended.

Reid tugged the man into his tub with him, wrapping his long legs around Hotchner’s sides. He leaned his head on the gravedigger’s broad shoulder.

“Don’t worry. We will start with small vats of water, and work our way up.”

“Unless you plan to be naked and willing in all those vats, you’re going to have to find another method of distraction, aren’t you, Doctor?” Hotchner murmured, turning around and grabbing Reid with both arms, backing him against the curve of the tub and lavishing his neck with kisses and tender bites.

“Hotch…” the doctor whispered.

“Stop talking,” Hotchner murmured in reply, hands going under, fingers sliding, tenderly probing.

Reid’s mouth fell open and his eyes closed. He leaned his head back with a gasp. Hotch kissed his way down the doctor’s chest, surprised to find that the water level in the tub was steadily disappearing. He glanced back towards the faucet, expecting some form of mischief or devilry. He found that Reid was holding the tub stopper between two long toes. Hotch retrieved it and dropped it away on the floor before he moved back between Reid’s spread legs.

The doctor was pouring a sweet-smelling, slippery substance onto Hotchner’s hand. Some of the lavender- scented liquid spilled down his bare stomach, trickled over his abdomen.

“Lie back then,” Hotchner whispered, not needing any further directions. He slickened himself and breached the doctor once more, with something much larger than his forefinger. Reid called out, arms tightening around Hotch’s back, teeth digging into his brawny shoulder.

“Gently…..gently….” Reid pleaded. “Ahnnnn….”

“That wasn’t what you said last time,” Hotchner teased, giving another thrust, and another. “There’s no soul in this world or the next what could compare with you like this,” he purred, watching worshipfully as the doctor writhed and crooned with pleasure.

“Hotch,” Reid groaned, rocking with the next thrust.

“Everything all right in there, Doctor Reid?” Mrs. Strauss called from the door as she rapped on it.

“Yes, fine, oh God,” Reid panted.

“Go away, woman,” Hotchner called out sternly. Strauss’s noisy heels clattered quickly down the hall.

Hotch didn’t miss a beat. His next thrust made the doctor’s legs coil tight around him.

“Oh God, Hotch…”

“Why is it you’re only religious when I’m between your legs?” the gravedigger laughed.

“Hotch…Hotch…”

“Think she wants to watch us?” Hotch whispered against Reid’s neck. “Maybe I should take you on the table at breakfast. Spread you wide open before the eggs are served?”

Reid moaned out loudly, incoherently.

“I’d like that. You naked on that big table, me between your legs. You think she’d watch me ride you? Maybe I should whip your haunch as I fuck you. Would it make you finish faster? Think she’s ever been ridden this way?”

Hotch’s thrusts increased in strength and speed as the doctor’s replying groans turned to whimpers of pleasure and lust. When the gravedigger filled him with hot, wet heat, the young man reached his finish as well, clawing, biting, nearly screaming with release. Hotchner seized Reid in a long kiss, holding his sagging frame close, cradling him protectively chest to chest.

“Oh dear. Now you’re going to need another bath, aren’t you?” Hotch asked, finally releasing Reid and eyeing the mess between them.

The doctor chortled softly and tiredly, reaching around Hotchner for the faucets. Reid held the gravedigger like a skittish horse and kept him firmly in the tub.


End file.
